What Will Survive
by eirabach
Summary: Post-underworld AU fluff in which happy endings are not really endings at all.


**AN: Liam!Lives wedding fluff (and my gosh is it fluffy, please be warned) written for a tumblr request. Enjoy? (I've not written fluff in a while!)  
**

* * *

 **What Will Survive**

* * *

" _ **Our almost instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love."**_

– _**Philip Larkin 'An Arundel Tomb'**_

* * *

The spring sunshine glints off of the millpond calm of Storybrooke docks, its warmth prickling at the back of Emma's neck even as her expression promises storm clouds on the horizon. The clanging of buckets and the sound of raised voices increase at she draws closer to her target.

One day. They only had to behave for _one more day_ for god's sake.

Emma strides up the _Jolly Roger_ 's gangplank, nearly going flying over the mop bucket and large discarded piece of soap abandoned on the deck. Her barely restrained curse is enough to draw the attention of the two bickering men standing over the hatchway, both of whom turn to her with matching wide grins.

Wide grins that _know_ they're in trouble.

"Emma!" Liam speaks first, his tone all joviality, swiftly shoving the paintbrush he was threatening her fiancé with only moments ago behind his back, "What brings you here so early?"

"It's not early," she hisses, "it's almost noon."

Liam tilts his head as if considering something.

"That is quite early, love, for the pleasure of _your_ company."

She gives Killian a pretty good death glare when he smothers a laugh.

"Shut it, pretty boy. This is not a social call."

Holding her badge out in front of her as if it can ward off any attempts the Jones brothers might make at wheedling their way back into her good books she steps over the puddle left by the overturned mop bucket and schools her expression into her 'sheriff face'.

"Do either of you care to explain why I have received complaints about you two trying to kill each other out here? Today? When, let me remind you, either of your deaths is likely to only result in my father hunting you down and removing you from Hades' clutches in the most painful way he can manage?"

"We're not trying to kill each other," cries Liam, scandalised.

"Well. Not on purpose," Killian scratches behind his ear, Emma's eyes narrowing at the tell.

"So what are you doing that has the dockland fishwives so scandalised?"

"Merely a bit of painting, my dear Emma," Liam allows the paintbrush to reappear and gestures with it breezily, "we just want the old girl looking her best for her big day."

"Our – our big day," Killian throws in quickly, his less-than-gentle elbowing of Liam's side not escaping Emma's eagle-eyed glare.

"Hmmm," Emma taps her badge against her hip, "and how's that big day going to look if I've got you both locked up for domestic disturbance, huh?" Killian winces. Emma spares him an evil little smile. "I'll even let you explain it to my mother."

"Now Swan," he hastens towards her, hand out-stretched, kicking a bucket behind him as he goes, "let's not be hasty."

Emma leans back slightly, hands in her back pockets, and allows herself a moment to bask in the way he leads with his hips into her personal space (not that there's ever been much of _that_ between them) and the way the sunlight makes his eyes brighter than the ocean that surrounds them.

Killian tucks his tongue into the corner of his mouth, smirking. Emma blinks hard.

 _Focus_.

"Are you trying you use your masculine wiles on me?"

Killian's smirk twitches. "That rather depends, is it working?"

"Should I leave?" Calls Liam, clearly amused.

Emma rolls her eyes. "This sheriff is immune to you. I should have sent Dad, you'd have had more luck."

Killian wrinkles his nose. "But much less fun."

"I'm leaving!" Liam warbles over the sound of the hatch creaking closed.

Killian throws a frustrated glance back over his shoulder, "And good bloody riddance too, he's been driving me insane Swan. Mop this, hammer that, paint the other. You'd think I'd never spent a day on ship maintenance in three centuries."

Emma smiles, relaxing her stance and reaching up to rub at a smear of blue paint on Killian's cheek.

"Is that why you were hanging him over the rail by his ankles?"

Killian barks a laugh.

"Is that what the call was about? Well I can assure you, there was no murderous intent. My slightly insane brother only wanted a good view of the paintwork underneath the balustrade, since my upkeep has apparently been so subpar."

"He's just fretting," Emma soothes, "he wants tomorrow to be perfect."

Killian looks at her, aghast.

" _He_ wants tomorrow to be perfect? How on earth do you think I feel! I should be spending today ensuring that everything is exactly as it should be and instead I am being berated about invisible barnacles and I cannot comprehend – "

"Killian, Killian calm down," she lays a soothing hand on his chest, "I think he's just nervous, that's all."

Killian narrows his eyes at her. "Are you quite sure you're marrying the right brother, Swan? Because I should warn you, he is intent on wearing a truly ridiculous hat. It would look most odd in those portraits your mother keeps going on about."

"I am," she reaches up to rest her arms over his shoulders, allowing her bodyweight to tip her body against his, " _quite_ sure."

"Only quite?" Killian growls lowly, hand and hook working together to pull her flush against him, "I fear more convincing might be in order."

Emma giggles, swats lightly at his shoulder, and wonders when she became the sort of person who giggles ( _When you let yourself be happy_ , trills her inner Snow White). "Alright, champ. Hold that thought till tomorrow, yeah?"

Killian huffs. "This rule about sleeping apart is quite ridiculous, Swan."

"It might be ridiculous, but it is a _rule_."

"I have little patience for rules," he wiggles his eyebrows, hand sneaking under her jacket, " _pirate_ , remember?"

Emma pushes him away with more determination than she really feels. "Maybe so, but it's my mother's rule, and I think even fearsome pirate captains know when they're beaten."

He sighs, looking back over his shoulder toward the hatch that Liam has left slightly ajar. "They do if they've the brains they were born with I suppose. So you're leaving me to Liam's tender mercies, then."

"I am," she rubs her hand up his arm, "and I'm going back to the station. Try not to get me called out again won't you?"

"It's not me!" Killian protests, "Honestly, Swan, give my brother a task and he's a man possessed!"

"You love it," she snorts.

"You know," he says, with the gentle disbelieving smile that he's worn so often since their return from the underworld, I do. I really do."

She feels his eyes on her as she heads back across the docks until she hears Liam's cheerful bellowing recommence and allows a little snigger to sneak out. She loves it a bit, too.

* * *

Her last shift as an unmarried woman has come to a dull, if drawn-out, end and she's returned home to find her son writing at the table and her mother already several glasses into the bottles of champagne they'd brought.

Emma kicks off her boots, since Killian's not here to berate her untidiness, and tries to steal a glimpse of what Henry's working on. "I wish you'd let me see."

Henry curls his upper body around the notepad he's been ferociously guarding for a couple of weeks now, his irritated expression the epitome of interrupted concentration. "It won't be a surprise then, will it?" he grouses.

"Yes, Emma," her mother calls from where she reclines on the sofa, glass of champagne perilously close to tipping over, "where's your sense of adventure?"

"Hiding behind my increasing sense of terror?" Emma flops into the armchair opposite Snow, trying to ignore both Henry's continued scribbling at the kitchen table and the achingly empty space where Killian should be. Her own glass of champagne sits mostly untouched on the coffee table.

"Having second thoughts?" Snow raises her eyebrows, "Shall I call your dad? No doubt he'd be delighted, and for more reasons than you might expect."

"Ha ha," says Emma, "you're hilarious. And no, no I'm not having second thoughts about marrying Killian. I'm having second thoughts about having a wedding."

"You could have told me that before I started this thing," says Henry, "If you don't let me make this speech I'm going charge by the line for wasted effort."

"Charming," huffs Emma, "mercenary tactics from my own son."

"A man's got to eat," Henry looks up at her from his notepad and winks. She throws a cushion at him.

"I feed you, mister. More than I feed anybody else for that matter. I thought you were going to stay on the ship tonight with Killian and Liam?"

"I am," Henry closes the notepad and drops his pen with a sense of dramatic finality, "now, in fact. I was just waiting till they've probably drunk enough that they've started crying, in case they come out with any more good stories for the speech."

"No rum," Emma warns, even as Snow refills her champagne flute with slightly wobbly hands, "I do not want the best man puking his guts up."

Henry salutes her smartly, a habit he's picked up from Liam. "No worries, mom. I shall be on my best behaviour. I can't make any promises about anybody else."

Emma shrugs, "I'm not worried about Killian – he can handle his drink."

"I was thinking more about the officiant than the groom. We don't want to have to prop him up."

"Okay," she nods, "cut Liam off after the first bottle. He was really into Dr Pepper when he came for dinner last week, pick some up on the way and maybe you can convince him it's some sort of wedding tradition here."

Henry sighs dramatically, shouldering his rucksack. "The duties of a best man are never done. If I'd known I basically had to babysit I'd have never have said yes."

He lets the door slam behind him as he leaves, the noise reverberating through Emma with a sort of startling finality that had her reaching for her glass and knocking her drink back in one solid gulp.

"You can't say that," slurs Snow, pointing at her with her glass, "you did the asking."

Emma resists the urge to snarl. She knows her parents' teasing is part and parcel of the parents-of-the-bride thing that they've so enthusiastically embraced, but there's still a part of her, small but close to the surface tonight thanks to a combination of nerves and adrenaline, that feels she has to justify her choice – justify _Killian_. Snow, to her credit, furrows her brow and puts her glass down on the table only slightly too hard.

"And that's probably enough of that."

"The champagne or the second-guessing?"

"Both."

Snow beckons her over, and Emma moves to the sofa, allowing her head to drop to her mother's shoulder as Snow strokes her hair.

"I miss Killian," she admits into her mother's sweater. Snow hums gently.

"You're getting married in the morning."

"I know. But I miss him now."

"Is this the first time you've been apart? Since, y'know?"

 _Hell_ , Emma's mind inserts, _since I killed him and sent him to Hell._

"Yeah," she says instead, "it is."

"That is hard," Snow sighs, and there's no patronizing tint to her tone even though Emma thinks she probably deserves it, "I'd say it gets easier, but I'm not sure it does."

Emma shuffles slightly so that she can see her mother's face. "What do you mean?"

"I still struggle, being apart from your father. We were apart for so long thanks to things we couldn't control, it seems crazy to ever be separated from him by choice."

"But you come here all the time, and Dad works nights or goes out with Killian and Robin, you've never said anything!" Emma sits up, ready to abandon their plans for the evening, "Go home, just come over early to get me in my dress, I'll be fine here I can watch Netflix or – "

"Or go trespassing on the _Jolly Roger_?" Snow raises her eyebrows then shakes her head gently, "No Emma, your father and I can't live in each other's pockets any more than you and Killian can. We can't live our lives like we're going to be torn apart at any moment, as hard as it is, sometimes we have to let go, just a little bit."

Emma harrumphs. "Easy to say, Mom, but have you _looked_ at our lives recently. If I didn't _know_ I'd broken it, I'd say we were still cursed."

Snow smiles and presses a kiss to the top of her head. "But we always find each other, don't we."

Emma thinks of curses and memory loss and wicked witches. Frozen walls and stolen hearts and darkness creeping up on you. She thinks of the lord of the dead and _don't you know, Emma? It's you._

"Yeah," she says, "we do."

* * *

Emma runs her hands down the folds of her skirt, eyeing her reflection with a combination of disbelief, nerves and pride. "Do you think it's too much?"

Snow adjusts a last curl so that the gold tiara sits prettily on Emma's hair with a sort of weighty finality that belies its delicate construction. It had been made for Snow when she was Crown Princess of her father's kingdom, and had made its way back to her via Gold's shop and a touch of breaking and entering that David consistently denied.

"I think you're perfect," Snow says with a watery smile, "something borrowed, that's how it goes right?"

"Right," Emma smiles, "and the dress is new, and I'm not telling you about the blue."

The blue is silk and lace and _not_ for her mother's eyes.

"So something old?" Snow disappears from the vanity to rummage in the suitcase she'd dragged over to Emma's the day previously (apparently being mother of the bride required more or less the same level of fussing as being the bride herself, even in the Enchanted Forest) "Ah ha!"

She makes her way back to the dresser with a length of vaguely familiar purple ribbon in her hand. "Granny found this, and I thought you might like to tie it to your flowers?"

She waves the ribbon at the bouquet of pink middlemist flowers lying on the dresser (getting them just right had taken Emma three goes, but even though the price of the magic had been the sudden and brutal death of every one of her houseplants she still thought it had been worth it).

"Isn't that from my baby blanket?" Emma can't help the burst of fear that accompanies the thought of her blanket being taken apart, even for her wedding day, even though she has so much more now than she could ever have dreamed of on all the long dark nights when it was all she had.

"Oh, oh no," Snow soothes, "don't worry, it's just a spare piece, Granny found it in her knitting bag and thought you might like it. Your blanket's fine."

"Granny made my blanket?" Maybe she's just feeling a bit fraught today but she's genuinely on the edge of tears, furiously flapping her hand over her eyes before tear tracks can spoil her and her mother's hours of effort.

"Oh darling," Snow looks pretty close to tears herself, "must you always doubt how loved and wanted you were?"

"No," she takes the ribbon with trembling hands and wraps it firmly around the stems of the middlemist, "I don't, not anymore."

There's a furious honking from downstairs, David having arrived to convey her in her chariot-cum-truck. Emma allows herself one last turn in front of the mirror as Snow reaches, panicked, for her hat. She admires the lace of her bodice and the gentle flare of the white satin skirt, allows herself a secretive smile at the row of tiny buttons that run up the back (her mother had called them cruel, considering she could hardly undo them herself and her groom-to-be has only the one hand. Emma had seen them for what Killian would make of them. A _challenge,_ and one she'd be sure to reap the fruits of), then grabs her flowers with a glare of determination that may be more suited to a stake out than a wedding.

"And after today, I don't think I ever will again."

David had cried, of course. Even Emma's desperate pleas of _Dad no, don't, my mascara_ couldn't restrain the flood. The truck had been diligently decorated with ribbons and bows a plenty, and she only felt slightly like a little kid playing dress up as she squeezed herself in between her parents and allowed her carriage to convey her to the docks.

It has all felt a little like playing pretend, she can admit that, like there was never going to be an actual wedding because evil never takes a break and she's still the saviour, after all. Then she gets to the docks, and looks up. And suddenly it's nothing like playing at all.

"Oh my God."

Nothing, not months of Liam's teasing calls of 'your highness', not the sword at her father's hip, not even the tiara in her hair could have prepared her for this.

The _Jolly Roger_ sits low in the water, gleaming from bow to stern, with dwarves arrayed along the guardrail and Henry standing at the top of the gangplank, rocking back on his heels with his hands behind his back and a very familiar cutlass at his side.

Emma gulps back a sob; Killian can deny it all he likes, but he's the most sentimental fool she's ever known.

"Oh Emma," whispers her mother, sounding close to tears herself, "look."

She follows Snow's gaze to the spot on the hull where the _Jolly Roger_ had always borne her name. Now, in curving script and delicately painted in black and gold on blue, it reads _The Jewel of the Realm_.

"He let Liam rename his ship!" Emma gasps, strangely horrified.

David squeezes her elbow lightly. "Let's be fair, it was Liam's ship to begin with. Anyway, it was Killian's idea."

She looks at him, dumbfounded.

"What? Why?"

Her dad, to his credit, manages to resist the urge to roll his eyes. "You might still be in denial about this being a royal wedding, Emma, but Killian isn't. The Jewel of the Realm was a Royal flagship once, and now she is again."

Emma shakes her head. She knows this story, intimately, and now from two sources at that. There's no way Killian would ever sail for a monarch again, it's against everything he's fought for, it's everything he despises. "But he turned pirate because of how corrupt his King was, it doesn't make sense."

Snow smiles gently. "It makes perfect sense, Emma. Just look at the flags she's flying."

Emma looks up. Sure enough, the black flag is withdrawn and two others fly in its place, one is buttercups and a lion that feels more familiar than it probably ought to, the other stylised black squares and flames on white. "I don't…"

"They're _yours_."

They are.

This is a royal wedding and she is a princess twice over and Killian's ship is flying her flags and the _Jewel of the Realm_ and…

Leroy clears his throat.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Her Majesty the Queen!"

Snow gives her a last pat on the hand, and trips lightly up the gangplank to take Henry's arm. They disappear from view as he escorts her to her seat.

Emma thinks she's going to be sick.

"Oh, Regina's going to _love_ that," she manages through suddenly painfully dry lips.

David shrugs. "She'll keep her mouth shut for one day unless she wants me to refer to her as the dowager to her face."

Leroy makes some sort of signal to the other dwarves

"Ladies and Gentlemen. Please be upstanding for Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess."

To Emma's horror, the other six dwarves lift bugles to their lips, a slightly-less-than-tuneful fanfare heralding the creak and groan of the ship as the guests on deck rise to their feet.

"You know, the bugles were a tradition I could have lived without," she whispers to David out of the corner of her mouth as she simultaneously attempts to give Leroy an at least semi-grateful smile.

"I'll bear that in mind for next time shall I?" David says, but there's nothing but teasing in his tone, and he's already gently guiding her up the gangplank.

"Trust me Dad. This is _it_."

"Yeah, so I figured." He smiles, a little bit watery and she's afraid the waterworks might return, but then he's turning them so that they're facing the helm, where she can already see the promised ridiculousness of Liam's hat, and Henry's smile, and the straight, proud nervousness of Killian's back. "Here we go."

David says it as if this is the start of something, and okay it is, it's the start of a marriage and of being a wife and what-have-you, but this is just another step on the path that started with a beanstalk. It's not the start, or the end. It just is.

It just is.

Even from this distance she can see the way Killian's fingers twitch as he holds them behind his back.

She can do this.

Emma tries to nod to their guests as she beings her trip down the makeshift aisle, acknowledging Blue alongside some of the better behaved lost boys (Liam junior not among them, which is unsurprising but a little bit sad all at once), and Regina and Robin keeping their cavalcade of children in hand (Neal has been lent to them for the duration, and three under five is not Emma's idea of a good time). Belle is a quiet, shadowed figure who stands alone at the far end of a row, her hand on her stomach and her eyes far away. There's Granny, and Ella, and Archie, and…

It's a funny moment to be shy, halfway down the aisle in your wedding dress, but she can feel the exact moment Killian turns around as the air between them seems to crackle with electricity, her cheeks burning as she dares to look at him through her eyelashes.

He's sort of half-gaping at her, something suspiciously like tears shimmering on his cheeks, with the air of a man who cannot believe his luck.

She knows exactly how he feels.

She can sort of feel the way Liam beams at her as they reach the end (and she will be having words about that hat later, certainly), but her eyes don't leave Killian's, even as her dad kisses her cheek and disappears from her side.

"Hello," he whispers, and she clings on to his hook to anchor herself from drowning.

"Hi." It's a bit squeaky and she tries to clear her throat as delicately as possible, "you ready?"

"Aye."

They turn as one to face Liam as Henry strides up to stand proudly at Killian's right. Somewhere behind them she can hear Robin shushing baby Neal, somebody coughing, the clang of metal as a dwarf drops their bugle, but in front of her all she can see is the future.

"Sure about this?" Liam quirks a brow at her, and she hears Killian's irritated huff answering it with a golden smile and a tug on his hook.

"Never surer," she says.

So they begin. So they continue.

(So they are.)


End file.
